


A Hell for Every Caress

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hell, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 12:13:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6753352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam dreams it all: his own death, Dean’s deal, the desperate year before Dean is dragged to hell. He wakes in Cold Oak with a single goal in mind: do whatever it takes to stop that from happening.</p><p>When Sam kills Azazel and steps into hell willingly, he does it to save his brother.</p><p>By the time he gets to the cage, he’s determined to save the whole world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hubris

**Author's Note:**

> It was my absolute pleasure to work with [Pan ](http://winchesterchola.tumblr.com) on this challenge. She did a fantastic job bringing scenes from the fic to life, and her positivity and enthusiasm were a huge part of the reason I was able to get this finished. I'm also grateful to [Cecilia ](http://femmechester.tumblr.com), as always -- this fic was, I think, more her idea than mine, and her cheerleading is the only reason I ever get anything done -- and to [Vivian ](http://some-stars.tumblr.com), whose excitement and input made me believe this was a project worth finishing and gave me the final push I needed to see this through.

Sam has dreamed deaths before. Hell, he dreamed Jessica’s for weeks before it happened. He’s dreamed the deaths of complete strangers, people with the kind of problems he and Dean were raised to solve, and some of them he saved and some of them he didn’t.

This is different, though. First, he dreams his own death. And then he dreams Dean’s.

It’s visceral in a way it usually isn’t. He’s getting it first hand this time, experiencing it up close and personal, feeling exactly what it’s like to have a knife digging into his back, severing his spine. He knows, in that moment, exactly what it feels like to be absolutely sure that he’s going to die. He sees the look on Dean’s face, hears the grief and fear and desperation in his voice, and that reaction tells him exactly what Dean is going to do before the dream even shows him.

He gets the rest in bits and pieces. He sees Dean standing at a crossroads and bargaining, trading every year of his life except for ten, nine, eight, five, one for Sam. He watches himself frantically look for solutions that don’t exist, witnesses them both spending all that time trying to get Dean out of his deal, looking and looking for a loophole and never finding one. He sees Dean’s ever increasing despair and terror that he tries to mask with petulant apathy and casual decadence; he sees the calm acceptance that’s even worse.

Eventually, he watches as hounds he can’t see rip into Dean. He feels Dean’s blood warm on his hands, his own hot tears running down his face.

And then he wakes, and he’s alive and alone and has no idea where he is.

When he meets Jake, the pieces start to fall into place.

\--

It’s frustratingly easy to like Jake, with his super strength and his good intentions, even though Sam knows Jake’s going to be the one to put that knife in his back.

If that were all it was, he might let it happen. It wouldn’t be the first time he thought it might be for the best. But it’s not just his life on the line, this time. It’s Dean’s, too.

So he thinks. He sizes Jake up, tries to figure out a way to make this work out so that everybody lives. That particular plan has never worked out so well in the past, but he figures the least he can do is _try._

He thinks while they fight, while Lily dies, while Andy tries to contact Dean to show him where they are. He thinks and thinks and tries to come up with a way to get them all out of this mess, out of this hell Azazel has created for his special children.

He thinks, and then he dreams.

It isn’t a gift, what Azazel shows him. Not a warning, either. It’s Azazel having a laugh at Sam’s expense, showing him how well Azazel understands him, how pointless and foolish his hope really is.

What he understands, when he wakes, is that this isn’t a problem for him to solve, isn’t a case where all he has to do is pour a little salt and watch some dusty bones burn. It’s a competition of Azazel’s own design, and because it’s what he wants, he’s going to make sure there’s bloodshed. He’s going to make sure one of them wins, and if it isn’t Sam, it’ll be Jake, and if it isn’t Jake, it’ll be somebody else.

Azazel is going to manipulate them in the same way he must have manipulated Mary. Sam may not remember her, but he knows enough about her from Dean and his dad to know she never would have let this happen willingly.

His mom couldn’t stop Azazel. Neither could his dad, and neither can Dean.

But that doesn’t mean no one can.

Sam recalculates.

He decides he’s going to win.

\--

When Jake goes down, Sam makes sure he stays down.

Sam knows Azazel will be pleased with him. He’s counting on it.

\--

He meets Azazel at the edge of the pentagram laid by Samuel Colt all those years ago.

Azazel smiles at him from the outside. He holds Sam’s eyes as he says, “So glad to see you’ve had a change of heart.”

Sam makes sure he’s the one to break the gaze. He looks at his feet. He says, “I know what’s at stake.”

As soon as Sam steps across, Azazel’s grin widens. He hands Sam the Colt, easy as that, cocky and victorious and foolish as all hell.

“You’re going to make a great leader,” he says, eyes flashing yellow.

Sam steps back over the rails, weighing the gun in his hand. He’s not as familiar with weapons as Dean is, but he has a solid decade of experience under his belt, and at this range, he knows there’s no way he can miss.

It could have been Jake, standing here. It could have been him leading Azazel’s army, carrying out his commands, doing his bidding. His special children are replaceable; that was the entire idea.

Sam wonders if Azazel ever considered the possibility that _he_ is replaceable. That the role of commander could be filled by Meg or Tom or any number of demons.

Or, perhaps, that it could be filled by Sam.

“Yeah,” Sam says, “I am.”

He takes aim.

\--

The demons scatter when Sam opens the gate, disappearing into the night sky in a rush of smoke and sound.

He can’t blame them, really, for choosing their freedom over him.

He swallows down his fear and his doubt, steels his resolve. He knows this is what he has to do, even if it means giving up everything he knows and cares about. Even if it means that Dean hates him. Even if it means they never see each other again.

Sam knows the other hunters can take care of the demons up here, but only he can rally them down below. Only he can lead them to a different destination than Azazel intended.

Even if Dean hates him, he thinks, it’ll all be worth it. At least Dean will be _alive._ He can be as mad as he wants, Sam decides, as long as he keeps on fighting. As long as he never gives up. As long as he never has to sell his soul for anyone, especially not the family for whom he’s already sacrificed so much.

Sam takes one last breath of fresh air, willing his legs to carry him where he needs to go, but before he can manage it, he hears his brother calling his name.

Sam takes one last look over his shoulder. He tries to smile as he says, “You have to trust me, Dean.”

The look of shock and horror and betrayal on Dean’s face is awful, but it still doesn’t trump the look he’d had in Sam’s dreams, the expression Dean had worn as he held Sam’s lifeless body in his arms.

Sam turns back around and steps into hell of his own volition, the gate swinging closed behind him.


	2. Hellfire

Sam could hear the tortured screaming even from the other side of the gate, but the face-to-face reality of hell is worse than he could have imagined.

He thought an impressive number of demons had escaped, but it turns out that was nothing compared to the ones who didn’t quite make it out. There are huge swaths of them, all in various stages of clawing their way to the gate, all completely indistinguishable from one another.

Sam’s curious gaze as he looks at the writhing mass of them shifts to a look of undisguised horror as he begins picking out individual demons, taking in their rotted faces, their burnt skin, their twisted limbs. Here and there, where tattered flesh has been ripped away, he can see the blackened remains of what must once have passed for their skeletal systems. The mess of blood and bone and char gives them a certain indistinct quality, makes them blend with their ground and with each other, blurs the lines between one demon and another, between the demons themselves and the dirt they’re digging into in their desperate attempts to escape.

Rationally, Sam knows that at some point, each and every one of them used to be human. He’s having a hard time holding onto that thought as he looks at their current state, though. They may hold the most basic shape of humanity, but they clearly aren’t human any more; they’re little more than the twisted remains of the people they used to be, tar and viscera clinging to the barest suggestion of arms and legs and faces.

When Sam finally recovers the presence of mind to wonder why the hordes haven’t swarmed him in the time he’s spent staring in disgust, he notices the shackles.

Hell literally has its hooks in the demons, rusted metal digging through flesh and bone. Each and every one is attached to chains that trail across the ground and down into open cracks and pits lit with hellfire, pulled taut as though hell is actively trying to prevent its occupants from escaping.

As he stands there taking it all in, the screaming that at first seemed incoherent to his overwhelmed senses begins to separate, allowing him to pick out individual voices amongst the clamor. Some of the demons are screaming in pain as they lose their fight with their chains, as they claw uselessly at the ground as they’re dragged back into the pits. Others are begging him for help, calling him _king_ and _commander_ and promising whatever little they have to offer -- their guidance, their loyalty, their mercy. Others reach in vain for the gate as they scream at it to reopen, as though they can compel it to obey by sheer force of will.

Others are screaming at _him,_ are clawing their way toward _him,_ and some of them are making progress.

Sam had stepped through the gate without hesitation, but now, standing in this place he swore he would do anything to keep Dean out of, he shudders involuntarily -- whether from disgust or doubt or fear, he doesn’t quite know.

He thinks, _What have I done?_

He closes his eyes, and as soon as he does, a voice cuts through the noise.

“Holy shit,” it says. “You’re Sam Winchester.”

\--

“Over here, hot shot,” the demon says, helpfully, after Sam spends a few moments scanning the masses in vain. It doesn’t have the equipment required for the actual expression, but Sam swears he can hear the eyeroll in its voice.

The demon in question stands nearby, one limb pressed decisively down on the chain tying it to the pit. It was close to the gate when it closed, Sam realizes. Probably would have made it out if it’d had just a few more seconds.

It had been damned to an eternity of torment, and with an end in sight, Sam had been the one to snatch its freedom from it. To snatch freedom from _all_ the demons trying to claw their way to the surface.

The weight of the world is nothing new to Sam, but this new responsibility is something else entirely. He fights the sudden, crushing feel of it, squaring his shoulders and deciding he may as well start somewhere.

He swallows his fear and guilt and steps up to the demon that called to him.

“You know who I am?” he asks, moving to grab the hook buried in its side.

It regards him silently for a moment. He can feel its hollow sockets on him as he takes the metal in hand and prepares to yank it free. “Yeah,” it says. “You’re supposed to be our fearless leader up top. You coming down here, though? Not part of the plan.”

“The plan?” Sam asks, frowning at the hook as he tries to work it free. He gestures to the chain. “Sorry,” he says. “Mind moving your foot?”

The demon regards him steadily for a few moments before it complies. As soon as it does, Sam pulls the hook from its flesh, releasing it just as the chain goes taut. He lets go and watches the chain, hook and all, retreat back into the pit without its prisoner.

Sam lets out a breath as the demon contemplates its newfound mobility, stretching its mutilated limbs. It must be grateful, Sam supposes, since it doesn’t lunge at him, doesn’t try to claw out his eyes or break his bones.

“Thanks,” it says, a bit begrudgingly, but to Sam’s surprise, it sounds like it actually means it.

“What plan?” Sam repeats, more insistently, now that the demon has been freed from its chains. “You mean Azazel’s plan? To start a war between demons and humans?”

The demon laughs, the sound of it much like the scraping rasp of the chains that still bind hundreds of its kin. “I’m afraid it was a little bigger than that, kid. Azazel wasn’t just trying to start _a_ war...he was starting _the_ war. This whole thing? Just the first step in kicking off the apocalypse.”

“Wait,” Sam says, uncertain of his own ears in this place and unable to read the demon’s expression well enough to tell if it’s joking. “What?”

The demon sighs. “You may as well settle in, boy wonder,” it says. “It’s a long story.”

\--

Sam’s head is spinning thirty seconds into the demon’s story, but he listens.

He’s always been good at listening, for all the good it did him.

He listens as the demon tells him everything it knows about the apocalypse. How Sam and Dean are supposedly the vessels for Lucifer and Michael. How Dean was supposed to trade his soul for Sam’s, break the first seal down in hell. How he would be raised by angels months later. How the demon was supposed to spend as long as it took -- years, even -- earning Sam’s trust to trick him into breaking the last seal. How Lucifer would once again walk the earth, freeing demons from hell, leading them, lifting them up from their current status as second-class citizens. How inevitably, both Sam and Dean would give the archangels the consent they needed to wear them to the apocalypse like specially-tailored suits.

How Sam’s actions had thrown a wrench into the whole damn plan.

“So that’s it?” Sam asks hopefully. “Apocalypse averted because I came down here instead of staying on Earth?”

The demon laughs again, loud and grating. “Not quite. The angels are going to make the apocalypse happen whether you play your role or not. You may be Lucifer’s true vessel, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be able to find some other poor sap to stuff himself into. And with you out of the picture, well.” The demon lifts one shoulder, lets it drop. “Word is Dean doesn’t make the greatest decisions when he’s worried about his little brother.”

He falls silent after that, trying to process everything. Trying to figure out if the demon is telling the truth, to determine what possible reason it could have to construct such an elaborate lie. Trying to come to terms with the fact that the angels he spent years praying to without ever really believing in are trying to bring about the end of the world. Trying to decide what he’s supposed to do now, to figure out where the hell he’s supposed to go from here.

He’s thinking, _If I try to interfere, will it even matter?_

He’s thinking, _If this is our fate, if this is the story written for us by God himself, will_ anything _I do matter?_

Sam doesn’t know what he envisioned, exactly, before he made his way down here, but it wasn’t this. He had been so intent on saving Dean’s soul, on maybe saving others from Azazel’s scheming, too. He wasn’t exactly counting on having to save the whole world.

If nothing else, he at least has to _try._

He’ll just figure it out as he goes. He has to.

\--

What he settles on is this: “I came down here to try and stop the war. That hasn’t changed.”

“A noble goal,” the demon says, clearly thinking it’s anything but. “And you plan to do that how?”

Sam forces himself to meet the spot where the demon’s eyes should be. He says, “With your help.” He tries not to make it sound like a question.

The demon, to his surprise, doesn’t laugh. Instead, it tilts its head curiously. “Did you miss the part where I said I was trying to bring about the apocalypse? Not stop it?”

Sam shrugs. “You want out, right?” he says. “I want out, too. Lucifer’s power is the key to both of those. You don’t have anything to lose.”

“But you do,” it says. “Hate to break it to you, but I don’t think that key is one you can use.”

Sam refuses to let himself be cowed. “Look,” he says, forcing his voice to remain steady, “will you help me or not?”

“I’ll help myself,” the demon says, without hesitation. “And anyway...” It jerks its shoulder in an almost human gesture. “Beats the weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Sam feels disproportionately triumphant at this smallest expression of faith. “Great,” he says, grinning. “So, uh...What’s your name?”

The demon may not have eyes, but Sam can tell it’s appraising him silently, doing its own internal evaluation. “It’s been a long, long time before anyone asked me that,” it says, finally. “Name’s Ruby.”

\--

Ruby is scarcely done introducing herself before one of the other demons finally claws its way free and comes for Sam.

Before Sam even has time to react, Ruby produces a cruel-looking knife and slams it into the demon’s chest. A flare of red sparks through its body, flickering like electricity is lighting up its nonexistent cardiovascular system, before it bursts into dust that settles slowly, becoming part of the ground.

Sam stands in stunned silence, jaw working. “Did that demon just...die?” he asks incredulously.

Ruby examines her knife, brushing the demon’s remains off its engraved surface with one bony finger. “For both our sakes,” she says, “I sure hope so.”

Sam knows he has more important things to worry about, but he’s stuck on what he’s just witnessed. “Where do demons even go when they die?” he asks. “If they’re already technically dead?”

“Who knows,” Ruby says. “Rumor has it you just become...nothing. No heaven, no hell, you just stop being. Infinite nonexistence. Scarier than hell, if you ask me.”

“So if...” Sam starts, watching as Ruby tucks her knife back away within her own flesh. He tries and fails not to grimace. “If I die here. That’s it? Game over?”

Ruby shrugs, apparently unperturbed by Sam’s disgust. “Better make it count.”

Sam makes a decision.

\--

Sam turns away from Ruby to face all of the demons still gathered around the gate. “If you follow me,” Sam says, “if you believe in Azazel’s plan, if you want Lucifer freed, or even if you just want to get the hell out of here, follow me and see it through. I’ll lead you. I’ll get you out. What do you say?”

There’s a shift in the tenor of the clamoring, a change in the tone as the demons contemplate his words, as they mutter to themselves or to one another. Some of them are clearly unaffected, simply continuing to struggle in vain to get to the gate or to him. Others finally seem to accept that their freedom is lost to them, giving in to the pull of the chains.

Some of them, though. Some of them dig in their heels and hold onto their chains, watching him, waiting for him to come and pull out their hooks. To keep the promises he’s already made.

Sam may not have their faith or their devotion, but he doesn’t need either. He just needs their help.

\--

It’s only after Sam has pulled the hooks from the demons that stuck around without trying to murder him -- all of them loyal to Azazel and Lucifer, he knows, or motivated by simple self-interest, not inspired by his poor excuse for a speech, not confident in his ability to lead, not him, with his pale human form that looks so out of place here -- that he has time to actually process the fact that he’s in hell.

“Let them stretch their legs and lick their wounds,” Ruby says.

Sam nods his agreement. It’s not like he trusts her, but he also doesn’t have any better ideas. Still, even if he doesn’t trust her to act in his best interests, he hopes he can at least trust her to act in her own.

He walks through the crowds of newly freed demons, murmuring what he hopes are reassuring responses to those who reach out to him, who call for him. Once he gets to the edge of the horde, where their ranks thin out a bit, he stands and looks out across the hellscape, taking in the vast barren wasteland.

Just as the demons look like little more than twisted, ruined versions of the humans they used to be, hell looks like it could once have resembled Earth. Whatever it may have been before, the landscape, in its current state, is as blackened and mutilated as its inhabitants.

It bears the same indistinct quality as the demons, too, ground and sky blurring together at the edges, making it difficult to pin down the layout of the terrain. One moment, Sam swears he can see for miles, and the next, he feels as if he can see only a few feet in front of him, the air thick with dust and smoke, searing and acrid.

Whatever hell is, there’s something about it that’s difficult for him to perceive. He feels as though he’s on a boat in the middle of a lake at night, swearing he can see the light of the shoreline in his peripheral vision only to have it blink out of existence when he looks at it straight on. Or like he’s driving down a long road in the heat of summer, watching the sky shimmer above the asphalt as he comes up over a hill, seeming real enough until it’s fading away, dissolving into the air.

Through the shifting haze, Sam gets the impression of endless plains stretching into the distance, vast skeletal structures rising from the ash, their exact borders shifting every time Sam takes his eyes off of them. He wanders slowly along the broken road leading from the gate, bits of bone and broken glass crunching beneath his feet as he walks. Features solidify around him as he approaches: shriveled trees, deformed shrubs, scattered boulders.

Everything flickers, here, lit not from the dark, mottled sky but from below, caught in the glow coming from the ground. The fire burning in the pits casts its reddish-orange light up from small cracks and large chasms, occasionally finding purchase and spreading out across the ash, flames working their way across the ground before sparking out.

Sam stands in silence, watching one such fire work its way up the side of a gnarled tree, and wonders for what feels like the thousandth time what the hell he’s gotten himself into.

\--

The tree has been completely consumed by the fire by the time Sam hears footsteps behind him. A moment later, a demon appears at his side, staring out across the landscape with him, arms crossed.

“Pretty messed up, huh?” Ruby says. If there’s a secret to telling the demons apart, it’s going to take Sam a long time to learn it, but he already recognizes Ruby by her voice.

She had followed him, earlier, when he had walked among the demons, freeing them from their bonds. He doesn’t know if it was days ago, now, or only a few hours. He wonders, vaguely, if that’s a side effect of his own keyed-up state or if time, too, is indistinct here.

But she had followed, watching and judging. Sam doesn’t know what she was looking for, but whatever she saw, she must have found it satisfactory. She’s become his de facto right hand demon, he knows -- less by his conscious choice, he suspects, than by virtue of her own personality. She’s certainly the most vocal of those demons who remained. He hopes that she’s also one of the least likely to try and murder him.

He’s not sure making casual conversation will actually help stave off any murderous intent, but he figures it can’t hurt. He keeps looking out at the nearly barren ground, the murky sky, and says, “Actually, it looks...I mean, it kind of reminds me of Kansas. Vast and empty, nothing but corn for miles.”

“Kansas, huh?” Ruby asks. “That your home or something?”

Sam pauses. “No,” he says, after a long moment. “Not really.”

Ruby makes a noise of acknowledgement, and they stand there together, staring into the distance. _Pretty messed up,_ Ruby had said. Sam wonders how long she’s been here, that she would describe such a place so casually. That she would become used to this over wherever she was from before. He wonders if she even remembers.

“How about you?” Sam asks, eventually. “Where are you from?”

He can feel her turn her attention on him, direct her empty gaze on him instead of the horizon. “Europe,” she says. “Long before your time.”

It’s a good sign, Sam thinks, that she’s sharing this with him. He wants it to be a good sign. He wants it to mean that maybe she really is starting to trust him, after all. That maybe he can actually trust her.

Sam forces himself to look at the space where Ruby’s eyes once were. He says, “Why did you decide to trust me?”

Ruby laughs, the sound choked and grating from her ruined throat. “I don’t,” she says, simply. She tilts her head, and Sam is struck, again, with the sense that he’s being calmly assessed. “But,” she adds eventually, voice quieter, “I _do_ remember what it’s like to be human. I remember. And I’d like to get that back if I can.”

\--

Once the demons have had time to stretch their limbs and adjust to their new mobility, Sam figures they may as well start moving.

He looks to Ruby for approval, and when she nods, they get up and start walking, Sam and Ruby at the front of the horde, leading the small army across the plains of hell.

Sam knows they’re moving because he feels himself walking, but even as he takes step after step, he finds it impossible to get any a real sense of how far they’ve gone or how long they’ve been traveling. He keeps looking into the distance, at the structures he had seen when he first stepped into hell, keeps falling back into the human habit of trying to gauge his progress by whether he seems to be getting closer to them. The problem is that they _don’t_ appear to be getting any closer. They shift and change, never quite the same each time Sam looks, always looming on the horizon. Time and space just don’t seem to work the same, here.

It freaks him out a little at first, but then he reminds himself there are other indicators they’ve moving, too. He looks back one day and realizes he can’t see the gate through which he came in.

He wonders if maybe the demons have some understanding of the layout that he doesn’t, if his inexperience and discomfort are as obvious to the demons as they are to him. He swears he can feel Ruby casting him sidelong glances, but he’s not sure if it’s actually happening or if he’s just imagining it because of his own paranoia.

He’s nearly convinced himself it’s the latter, so to distract himself, to keep himself from thinking about it too much, about the fact that he’s turned his back on the only exit from here that he knows, he talks with Ruby. “So,” he says, aiming for casual, “where’re we headed?”

“Relax,” Ruby says. “We’re on the right track. We’ve just got a long way to go to the cage. Gotta find the right way down first.”

Sam nods, deciding to switch to small talk instead. It seems easier, anyway. “So you said Europe. Where in Europe?” he asks. “What did you do? Did you have family?”

“Uh,” Ruby says. Her features don’t move, but with the way she shifts, Sam gets the impression she’s uncomfortable. “So here’s the thing,” she adds. “I’m a little fuzzy on the details.”

Sam raises an eyebrow. "How can you remember what it's like to be human if you don't even remember where you lived or what you did?" he asks.

“I remember what it was like to not want to die,” she says, quietly.

Sam opens to mouth to argue, to say something about how it seems a bit sad to define what it means to be human by death. But then he remembers what his own life has been like.

He decides to keep his mouth shut.

\--

They come across other demons as they travel, wandering the wasteland, struggling against their chains.

_I have to try,_ Sam reminds himself, repeating it like a mantra.

He talks to them. He asks them if they want to be free. He waits for their permission, and then he pulls the hooks from their bodies, removing their chains one at a time.

“All right,” Ruby says, after Sam succeeds in getting the first demon they come across to join their ranks. “Don’t get all excited, your highness.”

Sam can’t help but feel pleased with himself, though, at every new recruit, every small victory.

It doesn’t always go easily, of course.

Some of them refuse to come with him, laughing in his face, saying they’d rather stay here and try their luck fighting their own way out, thank you very much. Some growl out curses before they lunge for him, Ruby stepping in to put them down. Some don’t even spare him so much as a glance, choosing to continue their struggles in silence rather than align themselves with him.

“Well, well,” one demon says, sneering at them as they approach. “Look who it is. The prodigy, the boy king. Guess you're gonna be the one holding our leashes now, huh?”

Sam refuses to take the bait. “I'll take off the leashes and you can follow me or not,” he says.

Curiosity gets the better of him, later. “These chains…” Sam says, walking next to Ruby. “Where do they lead?”

“To the demons holding the chains,” Ruby says, and Sam swears he can see her shudder slightly. “To the place where the real torture happens. To the pit, where the _real_ hell is.”

“What’s that like?” he asks, not really expecting an answer.

“You know,” Ruby says, “fire and brimstone, whole nine yards. Detailed in a book called, oh, what was it? The Bible? Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

He ignores her snide tone. He can hardly blame her for it.

“That’s where we’re headed, isn’t it?” he asks, dreading the answer.

“Yeah,” Ruby says. “It is.”

\--

There are some demons, Sam learns, who have managed to escape their chains.

He also learns that just because they’re free of the hooks in their flesh doesn’t mean they’re faring much better.

Most of the unchained demons they come across are simply lying there, decomposing slowly until they become part of the detritus littering the ground.

“Just leave them,” Ruby says, but Sam refuses to listen.

Every time he finds a demon lying in the grime, half buried in the dirt that’s perpetually tinged with blood and mixed with flecks of bone, he sits with them for hours or days, for however long it takes. He talks at them until it becomes talking _with_ them. He gives them a purpose, something to fight for, something worth getting up for. He watches as they join the others, drinks in their awe at seeing so many other souls after spending years or centuries or millennia sinking into the ground.

“Why don’t they try and find others?” Sam asks, the first time. “This isolation seems so awful.”

Ruby gives him a strange look, something in her face shifting. She says, “None of us choose to be lost.”

So he finds them, one after another.

He stands up from the dirt one day, pulling the demon up with him, and turns to find Ruby watching him again.

“What?” he asks.

“You seem like the kind of sap that gave a shit about every stranger he met topside,” Ruby says. “No wonder this comes so naturally to you.”

“Is that a problem?” Sam asks, not sure if she’s complimenting or insulting him.

“No,” she says, hesitantly. “It’s just...different. It’s nice.”

He grins at her triumphantly after every success, and with every one, Ruby grants her praise a little more easily.

One day, Sam smiles at Ruby in celebration and finds her looking back at him with eyes where there were once just empty sockets.

He must be staring, because Ruby shifts almost uncomfortably under the scrutiny. “What?” she asks. “Do I have something on my face?”

“It’s not that,” Sam says. “It’s that, uh. You’re finally starting to have a face?”

Ruby gives him a long pause and a curious look. “Interesting.”

“You know,” Sam says, making a futile attempt to brush the grime of hell from his jeans, “my eighth grade english teacher said ‘interesting’ is an ugly baby word. It’s never a good descriptor. It’s something you’d use to describe an ugly baby, you know? ‘That’s an interesting baby you have there, miss.’” Absurdly, he feels nervous about Ruby’s reaction. She’s a _demon,_ he reminds himself. It’s absurd.

Ruby simply laughs. “Don’t worry,” she says. “You’re not an ugly baby. You’re still the boy wonder.”

\--

“Why are you doing this?” Ruby asks him one day, apropos of nothing.

“To save my brother,” Sam says, out of reflex. It’s only after the words are out of his mouth that he hesitates. It feels good, he thinks, this army marching behind him. Sure, saving Dean was the first reason. But he’s not sure it’s still the only one. Hell, he’s not sure it’s even the primary one.

“I get that you’re on a save-the-world crusade now,” Ruby says, sounding skeptical, “but you didn’t even know about the apocalypse when you walked through that gate. How exactly did you think you’d be helping him?”

“I was going to die,” Sam explains. “And he was going to trade his soul for me. He was only going to get a year before the hounds came for him, and I couldn’t--I just. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“How noble,” Ruby says dryly.

Sam bristles. “Are you saying I did the wrong thing?”

Ruby waits before she responds, contemplating Sam’s question as though she’s trying to decide how truthful an answer to give. “No,” she says. “You saved him a lot of pain. It’s a bad way to go.”

“You say that like you know,” Sam says.

“I do,” Ruby says. “Made my own deal, way back in the day. May not remember much else about my life, but I sure as hell remember how it ended, because after I had my ten years, the hounds came for me. Doesn’t matter how long you spend down here--what it feels like to be dragged here isn’t something you ever forget.” She pauses, considering. “Neither is the torture.”

“Jesus,” Sam says. “I’m sorry.”

Ruby shrugs. She doesn’t say anything else. They both know the apology doesn’t do shit.

It’s Sam who breaks the silence. “Back in what day?” he asks, because he finds he’s legitimately curious.

“Back when the black plague was having a field day,” Ruby says. “Those were dark times, and I say that as someone who’s spent the better part of the past few centuries down here.”

“That’s awful,” Sam says, and means it. “I mean, if you were dying, you really can’t be blamed for making the deal, you know? Not like you had any other choice, really.”

Ruby laughs, this horrible grating sound that comes from her ruined throat. “Look at you,” she says, “always assuming the best.”

Sam frowns. “If not that, then why?”

“I wanted to be a witch,” Ruby says. “I wanted the power. And I got it, and all it cost me was everything else.”

Sam is taken aback, but he’s not as surprised as he thought he would be. He can’t imagine what it must have been like, the helplessness in face of that plague, the desperation. Or maybe he can, and that’s why he can’t find it in himself to hold it against her. “I--well, were you any good?” he asks, because he wants to know in spite of himself.

“The best,” Ruby says, and when she grins, rows of perfect teeth shine between her ruined lips.

\--

Soon enough, Sam gets to play firsthand witness to a shining new soul being dragged down into the pit by a hound.

When he goes to save them, this time, Ruby helps. She kicks mercilessly at the hound until it slinks off, giving in to the pull of its chains without its precious prey.

Not that she needs to explain herself, because Sam supposes anyone dragged down here by one of those things would hold a bit of a grudge, but it catches him off guard when Ruby turns to him and says, “I was a cat person.”

He stands in stunned silence for a second before he breaks into a grin. “That's it,” he says, “I'm calling this off.”

Once they’re done laughing about it, the new soul having joined their army, Sam asks, “Were there really cat and dog people back in the 1300s?”

“Are you kidding me?” Ruby says. “Pretty sure that’s a war that’s been waged since humans first domesticated the damn things.”

“Guess we’ll have to go on fighting the good fight, then,” Sam says, and Ruby grins in agreement.

\--

One day, Ruby asks Sam if he has any other family besides his brother.

Sam wonders if she knows already. Wonders if with everything she knows about Azazel’s plans for him, about the apocalypse, about all of it, she already knows everything there is to know about him, too. He wonders if it means she’s just humoring him. But he looks over at her steady gaze and her frown framed with skin that’s actually starting to look like skin and he decides to take her interest at face value.

“My mom died when I was a baby,” Sam says. “And my dad, uh. He died last year.”

“I’m guessing your mom’s not down here,” Ruby says, and the things she doesn’t say tell him more than the things she does.

“You know about my dad, then,” he says.

Ruby shrugs. “Everyone knows,” she says. “He’s been down on Alistair’s rack for over a hundred years, now. There’ve been bets running about how long it’ll take him to break.”

“A hundred years?” Sam says. “But he...he hasn’t even been dead for…”

“Like I said, time runs differently down here,” she says.

“Oh,” he says. “Right.” He may have mixed feelings about his father, he feels sick, thinking about his dad down here for a century, enduring God knows what as a result of his deal. He swallows hard, wills himself to go on. “So where do you stand? You think he’s gonna break?”

“You know how I said I was the best witch?”

“Yeah?”

“I bought that power with my soul,” Ruby says. “Alistair’s...kinda like that, when it comes to torture, but he didn’t pay anything for it. He’s just a natural. A real prodigy. There’s a reason he’s one of the demons holding the chains -- he stays here because he _wants_ to. No one’s been gambling on whether or not your father would break. We’ve only been betting on when.”

“Shit,” Sam says.

“It’s nothing personal,” Ruby says, sounding nervous, like she’s actually worried she’s offended him. She must sense what he’s feeling and take pity, because the next thing she says is, “He must have traded himself for something really important, huh?”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “For my brother.”

“You and your dad both down here for Dean’s sake? He must be something real special.”

Sam thinks about Dean, who raised him, who took care of him more than John ever did, who would do anything for him. And now Sam finally gets to return the favor. “Yeah,” Sam says. “He is.”

Ruby reaches for Sam’s hand, curls her fingers around his, fingers now covered in pale flesh that hides the bones whose shapes he realizes he had memorized. It’s the first human touch he’s felt in months. He encloses her small hand in his own, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles.

“He would like you,” Sam says, thinking of Ruby’s sarcasm, her sharp edges.

Ruby laughs quietly. “You’ll have to introduce me sometime,” she says, in a tone that says, _Somehow, I doubt it._

\--

It’s weeks before Sam learns about the seals, and when he does, he understands all too well the reasons for Ruby’s delay.

“You’re not going to like this,” Ruby had said, grimacing. She was right.

He may have saved Dean from breaking the first seal, but he should have known it wasn’t going to be that simple. Nothing ever is.

“So what does that mean?” Sam asks. “Is there some other way to break it?”

“It has to be a righteous man,” Ruby says, “and lucky for us, angels are a little more hazy on the whole morality thing than you might hope.”

“Okay,” Sam says, resigned, “so?”

“So,” Ruby says, “you know those bets I mentioned?”

“Yeah?”

“It means I’m gonna lose,” Ruby says, squeezing Sam’s hand gently. “Sorry, Sam. It’s gotta be your dad.”

\--

Sam does his best not to think about the reality of what he has to do. The reality of what he has to force his father to do.

He’ll come to terms with it, though, he know. Just like he came to terms with John’s death, with Jessica’s death, with the fact that he was never going to be normal or safe.

The fact that he has an army is more than enough proof of that.

Fortunately, his army also proves to be an excellent distraction.

He walks among them more often than he walks before them. He has all the time in the world, so he takes the time to get to know them individually. Many of them remember even less about their lives and themselves than Ruby does, but when Sam asks them questions, they do their best to answer.

He learns, slowly, about the people they used to be. The things they used to do. The demons they became.

He learns their names. And when they can’t remember them, Sam helps them pick new ones.

The first time he does it, he finds Ruby looking at him curiously. She seems to do that more and more as time goes on; contemplates him with her eyebrows raised. “You really do believe in what you’re doing, huh?” she asks.

Sam says, “What do you mean?”

“You actually care,” Ruby says, emphatically, as though daring Sam to refute her. “You’re actually helping us because you think it’s the right thing to do.”

Sam thinks back to how Ruby had looked when he first stepped into hell. How they had _all_ looked, with those hooks in their bodies, those chains an eternal reminder of their damnation. How their flesh had melted from their bodies and their eyes had fallen from their sockets. He thinks of the kind of torture it would have taken to make a soul so twisted, to make a body so inhuman. “No one deserves this kind of punishment,” Sam says, with conviction. “Everyone deserves to be saved. Everyone _can_ be saved.”

At that, Ruby’s face falls inexplicably. “I admire that,” she says sadly. “I really do. I wish that was enough. But you’re going to have to do a lot more than whisper kind words to get us all out of here, and I’m not sure you’re gonna like it.”

\--

Sam is used to doing things he doesn’t like. Of taking one for the team if it’s for the greater good. It was the story of his life for over a decade.

Drinking demon blood, though?

“That’s…” Sam starts, struggling to find an adequate description, something to capture the horror of this new revelation piled on top of all the others. “It’s inhuman.”

“Yeah,” Ruby agrees. “That’s kind of the point. But I mean, I hate to break it to you, but you haven’t been human in a long time. You think any old person can just waltz down into hell with their meatsuit and their soul still joined at the hip and live to tell the tale?”

It doesn’t surprise him as much as it should, this confirmation of this thing Sam has always feared. This thing he’s suspected since he had words to articulate it. That he’s different. A freak. A monster.

That Ruby is asking him to not only accept that, but embrace it. _Enhance_ it. On purpose.

He swallows hard. He says, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“If it helps,” Ruby says, “giving their blood is something any demon here would be willing to do. It’s something _I’m_ willing to do. Something I want to do.” She bares her pale wrists, wrists covered in soft, pale flesh.

Sam takes Ruby’s hands in his own, running his thumbs across the veins lining her arms.

“Okay,” he says, because what choice does he have? “Yeah, okay.”

\--

The first time Sam drinks Ruby’s blood, he nearly chokes on it.

It tastes of sulfur and copper, burning his tongue and the back of his throat. Ruby simply laughs at the face he pulls and gently urges him to continue.

“You’ll get used to it,” Ruby says, after Sam has had his fill. He stares at the open wound on her arm, the cut still slowly oozing. With a flick of her wrist, the cut heals, the blood disappearing along with it. “See? No harm done.”

And then Ruby shows Sam what he can do with it.

The next time a demon comes for him, Ruby holds it down herself. She’s already told him what to do, how to kill not with the strength of his arms or the sharpness of his blade but rather with nothing but the force of his will. Has already told him to reach for the power that’s been in him since he was little, the same power that gave him the visions and prophetic dreams he used to write off as nightmares, and use it to take the demon out.

Sam reaches out hesitantly with the power he can already feel coursing through his veins, willing it to rise to the surface, to reach out beyond the confines of his body. He can only get as far as making the demon cough up some black smoke before his nose starts bleeding and his head starts aching. When he drops his arm, breathing hard, Ruby runs her blade through the demon’s back.

“Not bad for a first try,” she says, “but you can do better.”

\--

“I’m really not human, am I?” Sam asks, the first time he manages to smoke a demon out all the way. He can still taste his own blood at the back of his throat, can still see the demon twitching and writhing whenever he closes his eyes.

Ruby shrugs. “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she says, “but if part of you weren’t like us, you think we would follow you? We follow you _for_ that, not in spite of it. You don’t have to be anything other than you.”

They walk in silence for a long time. Ruby must be able to sense his unease. “Anyway,” she says, softly, “if you get good at this, when you’re topside, you’ll be able to kill demons without harming their vessels. Save a lot more people that way.”

Sam looks over at her in surprise, but she’s resolutely keeping her gaze fixed forward.

She’s right, he realizes. He’ll be able to save people. Not to make up for some flaw he sees in himself, for that part of himself he’s always seen as unclean, as Other. He’ll be able to save them _because_ of that. Because he can. Because he wants to.

The next time a demon offers him their blood, he doesn’t turn them away.

\--

Sam walks among his army, learning about them, learning their names, learning to distinguish between different ruined faces. He gives them friendship, gives them purpose, gives them names, and in return, they give him their blood.

He can see how thrilled they are to be helping, sees it written all over their nearly human faces. That, more than anything, is what steels his resolve. _I can do this,_ he thinks. _I can be their friend, their leader. I can be the savior they deserve._

He feels his power grow with each passing day. Or maybe it’s by the hour, now, that he can measure the growth in his strength.

His army grows ever larger, too, and he keeps asking Ruby, “Is this enough, now? There are so many. Certainly this is enough power.”

She keeps saying, “Not yet.”

Sam looks over his shoulder at the mass of demons stretching out behind them farther than the eye can see. He asks, “Why?”

“Getting rid of these low level demons may be a cake walk for you now,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean all of your enemies are going to be so easy to dispose of.”

“You’re thinking of someone in particular,” Sam says.

Ruby laughs, short and clipped. “Yeah,” she says, “but don’t worry. By the time Crowley registers you as the threat you are, he won’t stand a chance against you.”

\--

Sam understands, soon enough, why Ruby sounds so scornful as she says Crowley’s name, why it sounds like it hurts to hold it in her mouth.

Sam and Ruby are trying to save _everyone._ Crowley is only out for himself. A coward who would rather set himself up as king of hell than risk Lucifer returning to claim what’s rightfully his.

“Maybe we can change his mind,” Sam says.

And if he can’t? Well, he has an entire army behind him.

\--

The next demon spares Sam barely a glance before it goes straight for Ruby.

The hiss of _traitor_ is barely out of its mouth before Sam is reaching out, calling forth his power that is fueled by the blood of those who believe in him, the demons whose names he learns or gives, who look more and more human each time he walks among them.

It’s only a matter of seconds before the demon is coming apart at the seams, bursting to dust that dissipates into the hazy air, that settles onto the ground.

It still pulls at Sam, in spite of everything, this difficult thing he knows he has to do, and he regrets the necessity of it. He says a silent prayer for this soul which had to be sacrificed so he could save so many others.

When he helps Ruby up, she’s beaming at him. “Look at you,” she says, punching him in the arm playfully. “They grow up so fast. I’m so proud.”

She says it like she’s joking, but Sam can feel the truth of it -- can tell exactly how powerful he’s become since the first day he stepped into hell. He looks at her and he knows he couldn’t have come this far without her help. He doesn’t know what he would have done without her by his side this whole time.

He realizes, in that moment, that he _always_ wants her by his side.

When he goes to her, she doesn’t shy away. Ruby understands the look in his eyes, has been able to read him from day one. She offers herself up to him, all of her, lets Sam sink his teeth into flesh that’s radiant in the gloom, that looks divine against the nightmare backdrop. For the first time, he can’t taste even a hint of sulfur; Ruby’s blood is warm and sweet and tastes like nothing so much as the promise of liberation.

Sam trails his mouth from Ruby’s wrist up her arm, across her shoulder, her neck, her cheek, until finally he presses their mouths together. Ruby kisses Sam as she wraps her arms around him, as she urges him on, as she murmurs the reassurances he has become so accustomed to. She speaks with a human voice, she kisses him with human lips, she holds onto him with human hands.

She looks completely human now because she is, Sam knows. This place has twisted her into something else, but at her core, _this_ is who she is. Sam can finally see it now, can see all of her, can tangle his hands in her hair and run them across her skin, he can kiss her and taste her and love her.

He knows they’re being watched, but in this moment, he has eyes only for her. He feels no shame as he strips off their ragged clothes; after all, why should he? He knows some of the demons see him as their god, but he doesn’t want to be a distant god. Doesn’t want to be anything like Lucifer. He wants to be on their level. He wants to be one of them.

He looks down at Ruby and he knows, more than that, he wants to be one with _her._

Sam slides one hand down over Ruby’s breasts and stomach and down between her legs, and the way she gasps as she arches up into him is human. He kisses her slowly as he works with his hand, and when he pulls away to follow the path of his hand with his mouth, trailing kisses down Ruby’s torso until eventually he rests with his head between her thighs, hands parting her legs, the taste of her is human, too. So, too, are the sounds Ruby makes as Sam teases at her lips, as he circles her clit with his tongue, and so is the way she curls her fingers in his hair as he works.

Eventually, Ruby pulls Sam up by his hair, stroking him the rest of the way hard as they kiss, and then, without breaking contact, she shifts and guides him until he’s inside her. He sets up a steady, determined rhythm as Ruby hooks her legs behind his thighs and keeps her hands in his hair.

There’s heat building at the base of Sam’s spine that’s a pleasant contrast to the searing heat of hell, and when Ruby shudders under him as she comes, that’s nothing but human, too.

Sam comes shortly after, cheek pressed against Ruby’s, breathing in the scent of her hair, something bright and sweet, like flowers in the wasteland.

He kisses her as he pulls out, slow and affectionate. When they finally break apart, Ruby grins up at him. “Not bad,” she says. “For a dog person.”

Sam snorts out a laugh and Ruby laughs with him. He knows she laughed at him with derision before, back when they met, knows it must have sounded twisted and inhuman like everything here was at first.

Now, though? Ruby laughs and Sam can’t remember what it sounded like before. Whatever it used to be, it’s become the sweetest sound he’s ever heard.

\--

Finally, at long last, they head down below the surface.

It gets hotter and hotter the further they descend, the heat so searing that Sam knows it should be burning him. It's a constant distraction, but he keeps moving anyway. Keeps marching. Keeps freeing demons as he goes.

They all look human to him now. He picks them out by their pale flesh stark against the landscape, pulls them from the dirt and brushes off the grime. Pulls hooks from their skin and wipes off the blood.

By the time Ruby says they’re getting close, Sam’s army stretches farther than the eye can see, shimmers in one huge mass just like the landscape, vast and unfathomable.

It turns out the longest stretch of the journey was the trek across the wasteland. “We’re getting close to the rack,” Ruby says, after they’ve been traveling for what feels like only a few weeks at most. Maybe days. It’s a relief, knowing they don’t have much farther to go in the heat.

It figures that this is the point at which Crowley shows up to try and slow them down.

Sam thinks maybe he should be scared, but all he can think is, _Huh. He’s shorter than I expected._

“You idiots,” Crowley says, by way of greeting. “On your way to free Lucifer, are we?”

“On our way to set us _all_ free,” Ruby says, vehemently, before Sam can even begin to respond.

Crowley laughs derisively. “You’re going to get us all _killed._ ”

“You’re wrong,” Ruby says, with certainty. “Lucifer may not give a shit about us, but Sam does. He’s going to take that power for himself. He’s going to get us _out._ ”

Crowley rolls his eyes. “I should have known you would refuse to see reason,” he says, and that’s when the battle begins.

Well. Calling it a battle would probably be a bit generous.

Crowley may have his own army behind him, but it’s nothing like Sam’s. Not fueled by loyalty and pride and _love._

Ruby gets her knife in Crowley’s stomach and her hands on his throat, and when Sam reaches out, it’s only a matter of seconds before Crowley is bursting into black goo that melts in the heat, sizzling and burning away.

“Good riddance,” Ruby says.

\--

Crowley’s army is lost without its leader. Some of them throw down their weapons and flee. Others offer up their weapons in service. And some continue to fight.

There’s no time to try and convince them to do otherwise. Sam has to choose between the army he knows and the enemies he doesn’t, and by the time it’s over, Sam has killed dozens of demons.

“Sorry, Sam,” Ruby says, after. Sam knows she means it. “You can’t save everyone.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “I know.”

\--

It doesn’t work out with all of the demons who changed sides to join him. Sam is forced to kill some of them, to hook them back up to the chains, to leave them behind to rot.

They keep moving, and Sam feels the heat less and less.

\--

“Did you mean what you said?” Sam asks, when they’re finally approaching the rack.

Ruby knows what he’s asking: Did she mean what she said to Crowley.

“Yes,” she says, without hesitation. “You can absolutely do this, dumbo.”

Alistair sets down his knife, turning to meet them. He has a human face, but the grin that stretches across it is unnatural, somehow, too wide and feral for comfort. “Well, well,” he says. “The boy king. Let’s see if you do what I couldn’t manage in a whole century.”

John is flayed open, bruised and bleeding and still looking more human than Alistair, somehow.

“Sam?” he asks, and his eyes can’t quite seem to focus as he tries to meet Sam’s gaze. “Did--” he starts, but his voice breaks almost immediately. He struggles to continue as blood drips slowly from his mouth, sizzles in the air before it hits the ground. “Did you--did Dean have to--”

Sam takes a deep breath.

“No,” he says, and tries to ignore the split second of relief he sees on his father’s face before he continues, “I chose this.”

Sam reaches out, and with a twist of his hand, Alistair is choking and falling.

John watches with rapt attention, unable to tear his eyes away.

When Alistair dies, John steps off the rack and picks up a knife.


	3. Holy War

Sam loses track of time as they march ever further down into the dark.

It gets quieter as they go. The fire fades and the dust settles, and hell seems to absorb everything, even the sound of sam’s army marching around him.

He thinks, at first, that he’s getting used to the heat, but that’s only until he starts to feel the cold.

“I would have thought the devil burned hot,” Sam says, because he trusts Ruby too much to ask, _Are you sure we’re going the right way?_

“He did once, maybe,” Ruby says. “Back when he was the morning star. Black holes, though? Those burn cold.”

Sam watches frost gather in Ruby’s hair, collect on her eyelashes. He watches her skin turn blue.

He follows her into the dark and the chill and the silence, and he trusts her to get them where they need to go.

\--

They can feel it when the seals break.

Each one sends a shiver through hell, like the foundations are being rattled, like the prison is crumbling. Every vibration takes them a little closer to freedom. Every step takes them a little closer to the cage.

Sam’s army sings songs of praise, expressions of joy that span centuries, that stretch back through the ages. They sing to fill the silence. They sing for _him._

\--

There are whispers from the cage.

Sam can hear them over the sounds of his army, of the tremors running through their surroundings, over the sound of Ruby’s voice telling him how to lay the summons for Lilith. They’re inside his head, these whispers in a voice as cold and dark and still as their surroundings.

Lucifer promises Sam glory. Promises him power. Promises him a place at his right hand, if only Sam will break open the cage and say _yes._

“This is it,” Sam says. “If I fail, you get your god back.”

“You’re not going to fail,” Ruby says. “Look at what you’ve already done.” She gestures to herself, sweeps her arm out to encompass Sam’s entire army, the demons with human forms, human faces, where once was just ruined flesh and charred bone. “Lucifer never could have done that. You’re going to be a better god than he ever was. You already are.”

He hears the truth of it in every word, sees it in the way her eyes never leave his. Lucifer has been gone for millennia, but Sam is here now. Sam has lived and fought with them, talked to them, cared about them. It’s Sam who walks the earth, who leads them, who sees them and treats them like equals in a way Lucifer never did and never will.

All Lucifer ever did was _abandon_ them.

“I’m going to save you,” Sam says. “I’m going to save the world.”

He calls Lilith to the cage.

“I’m sorry,” he says, as he raises his hand.

Lilith smiles. “I’m not.”

\--

They say the devil looks like exactly what you always wanted.

Lucifer looks like pure, unadulterated power that is Sam’s for the taking.

He says yes.

\--

“Yes,” Sam says, quickly, easily, confidently.

Lucifer is free. Lucifer is in Sam’s head, in his body, is trying to take control.

But Sam is ready. He takes his rage from so many years spent feeling helpless and hopeless, of wanting to protect everyone and save everyone and being unable to, takes his own desperate desire to do good, takes Ruby’s faith in him and the unwavering devotion of the army behind him. Sam takes all of these things and he uses them to bolster his own confidence, to build Lucifer a new cage within himself, to shove him inside and throw away the key.

He subsumes Lucifer’s consciousness immediately. Effortlessly.

Sam takes a breath.

He stretches his wings.

\--

There is power buzzing under Sam’s skin like the threat of nuclear warfare. He is the greatest deterrent there ever was or will be.

He raises his hand, reaches with the energy that is part of himself and yet stretches beyond the vessel that was built to contain it.

He commands hell to come crashing down, commands chasms to open up into the earth, to take his army topside, just like he promised.

Sam commands it, and so it is.

\--

Sam builds them bodies from nothing. Wills them into existence in whatever form they desire.

Ruby stands before him in the light of day, eyes closed, face turned toward the sun in reverent awe. When she looks down again, when she opens her eyes, she smiles at him and says, “I love you, Sam.”

He doesn’t doubt the truth of it for even a moment. It’s written into the quiet bafflement on Ruby’s face. Her own shock at putting a name to something he knows she hasn’t felt in centuries.

“I love you, too,” he says.

He finally has the power to make sure that unlike everyone else who he has ever spoken those words to, Ruby will never be killed for it.

He won’t let it happen.

\--

Sam grows into his power like he once grew into his own skin. He had shot up what felt like half a foot over the course of a single summer back when he was a kid, maybe sixteen, seventeen. Dean had laughed at him, teasing, ruffling his hair, saying, “You may catch up with me yet, short stuff.” Sam had huffed indignantly and pushed his arm away.

Ruby is laughing, now, not teasing but delighted.

Sam tests the limits of his powers and realizes there aren’t any. He can do anything. He can give demons back their original bodies, he can make them practically human, he can cure all ills, he can raise people from the dead. He can save demons and humans alike. No one ever has to die on his watch if he does not allow it.

He has spent his whole life feeling like he was letting Dean down. Like he always needed to be protected, like he always needed to be saved.

Now, though? Sam can take care of himself. He can be something other than a disappointment. He can do good, he can save people, he can save the _world._

Dean will see. He has to.

\--

When Sam finally meets Michael, he is wearing the wrong vessel.

Sam, though? Is perfect.

He is greater than Michael, than Lucifer, than any absent God.

“You win,” Ruby says, when the apocalypse is officially over.

Sam smiles. “So I win.”

\--

Dean stands before him with a blade in his hand and an angel at his side.

The angel is of no consequence. His grace stretches far beyond his vessel, reaches thousands of feet into the air, but it is nothing compared to the grace Sam contains.

“I saved the _world,_ Dean,” Sam says. Calm. In control. He has no reason not to be.

“You’re playing God,” Dean says, with vehemence Sam doesn’t understand.

“Yes,” he admits. “And I’m doing a better job of it than he ever did.”

“Why are you doing this?” Dean asks, his face still a mask of pain and rage and betrayal, just like the last time Sam saw him.

Sam doesn’t apologize. He has nothing to apologize for. He says, “It had to be me.”

Dean scoffs. “Wake up, Sam,” he says. “You know that isn’t true.”

Dean comes for him, then. Sam should be able to overpower him so easily, but somehow -- somehow Dean slips up close to him and slides a slim silver blade between his ribs.

He is still trying to process how it happened when Dean repeats himself.

He says, “Sam, wake up.”


	4. Home

Sam comes to in the real world, in all its pain and disappointment.

After having such power and conviction, after having demons place their faith in him and following him without question, after finally feeling like he found where he fits in the world, he wakes up feeling weak and helpless and alone.

“Thank God,” Dean is saying, over and over and over, as he unties Sam’s hands, as he pulls the needles from his veins.

“No,” Sam says, “send me back. I don’t want to be saved.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "There should be a hell for my anger, a hell for my pride - a hell for every caress" -- _A Season in Hell,_ Arthur Rimbaud


End file.
